The Seattle Collaborative Orchestra is pleased to announce its 2017-18 season! This year we will present three concerts, all of which feature a mix of standard orchestral repertoire, rarely performed repertoire, along with new works by composers who are female, from the Pacific Northwest, or both!

We are actively seeking diverse, highly capable student musicians from across our region interested in participating and engaging in our orchestra. If you are interested, please see our Auditions page for complete information about how to become a member of SCO.

Seattle Collaborative Orchestra presented the premiere performance of composer and trombonist Andy Clausen’s orchestral suite This Is Water. The work was commissioned by our Music Director Anna Edwards, and it is inspired by Benjamin Britten’s orchestral interludes in his opera Peter Grimes. Both works, along with the west coast premiere of Jennifer Higdon’s Violin Concerto were presented at our Spring concert on 4 April 2017.

Andy is a New York-based composer, trombonist and 2014 graduate of both The Juilliard School and Seattle’s Roosevelt High School. The New York Times has described his work as “sleek, dynamic large-group jazz, a whirl of dark-hued harmony and billowing rhythm… The intelligent sheen of Mr. Clausen’s writing was as striking as the composure of his peers… It was impressive, and not just by the yardstick of their age.”

Read more about Andy and This Is Water under Featured Composers – Andy Clausen.

Please join us for our second concert of the season, a Chamber Music Series, on Tuesday February 7, 2017 – 7:30pm. This concert will feature various smaller ensembles: brass, woodwind, percussion, string, and mixed ensembles. The repertoire to be announced soon.

If you would like to join SCO, auditions are now open! See Auditions on this website for full details.

Seattle Collaborative Orchestra performed the West Coast premiere of composer-conductor Leanna Primiani’s SIRENS for Orchestra in our November 2015 concert. In talking about this piece with Primiani’s publisher, Subito Music, Anna Edwards, SCO’s Music Director commented, “It’s been a blast for me and the musicians to work on this piece!” Based after Homer’s classic “The Odyssey,” the ten-minute work premiered in 2008 at the Nashville Symphony, led by Leonard Slatkin.

Composer and clarinetist Angelique Poteat, whose new work Listen to the Girls premieres on SCO’s November 18 concert, sat down with Shaya Lyon of the Live Music Project to discuss her creative process, the stories that inspired the work, and what it’s like to compose for a choir with orchestra. Read more at the Live Music Project.

On March 17 at Roosevelt High School in Seattle, fans of SCO enjoyed a fabulous concert with soloist Maria Larionoff – violin and Catalin Rotaru – double bass performing W. A. Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola, K. 364. The soloists performed a transcription of the work by Catalin Rotaru, wherein the viola part, probably originally written by Mozart to highlight his own virtuosity on the instrument, was played on the double bass.

Following this opening, the audience was transported from 18th century Salzburg to tropical rain forest of today’s Puerto Rico by Victoria Bond’sEl Yunque. As the composer noted about this work, the rainforest El Yunque “is home to many exotic cratures, including the Puerto Rican Parrot and the tree frog called ‘Coqui.’ Because both of these are so musical in their vocalizations, I decided to create a sound environment composed of their cries.”

Our soloists returned to perform a stunning rendition of the Grand Duo for Bass and Violin by Giovanni Bottesini. This show-stopper reminded the audience of Bottesini’s close friendship with the operatic composer Giuseppe Verdi, with its overlapping lyrical melodies between the bass and violin, played with superb virtuosity by Maria Larionoff and Catalin Rotaru.

After intermission, the orchestra performed the grand and deeply moving “Organ Symphony”, Symphony Number 3 by Camille Saint-Saëns, featuring Cara Peterson on Roosevelt’s Froula organ. Ms. Peterson’s sensitive touch and the warm balance between the organ and orchestra brought out the depth of this work written by Saint-Saëns in 1186 for his good friend Franz Liszt.